BGR is quite positive, but as I recall they're typically quite favorable towards MS. The other two reviews are much less favorable and I think the summary's tone is pretty much in line. I mean heck, the article at Ars is entitled "Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro: Hotter, Thicker, Faster, Louder" - you don't even really need to read it to get the not-so-rosy picture.

The thing is, Google is actually transitioning at least some of their services to use Google+ for all "sharing" purposes under the hood. I know this is true in the case of Picasa at least - Picasa as most people will see it is now simply a part of Google+. (I believe it's still technically possible to not use Google+ for sharing things in Picasa, but G+ is the default, and most people using Picasa at this point are "contributing" to Google+).

Are other Google services doing this? It's hard to really know what counts, since the authors of the survey don't reveal their methodology or describe what specifically they're actually counting. I'd be incredibly surprised if Picasa didn't "count" as "Active Usage" though.

It seems as if this is what a lot of "Google+ users" actually are - people who use other google products which have Google+ integration that they trick people into activating. In addition to youtube they do the same trick for Picasa, instant upload on Android, gmail chat, and probably others that I am not aware of.

I actually like Google+ well enough, but I think their reports of its user base are greatly exaggerated.

I love GNOME 3, but the reality of current driver support on Linux is that many systems which aren't even very old are incapable of running GNOME 3 properly. Not to mention, remote desktop software such as FreeNX is incapable of 3d acceleration at all, and so a solution that does not require hardware acceleration is vital for that use as well.

I can certainly understand the desire to kill off fallback mode in the long run, but hastening its demise will just hasten the exodus of GNOME users. It's sad to me that the GNOME developers seem to have chosen the most abrasive transition strategy possible, ignoring critical use cases and the users who require them.

All that said, I don't see how a fork of fallback mode really makes a lot of sense at this point. Mate is already out there, and it seems to fill the same niche.

Why, exactly, should the study give the US a pass because it has more poor students? From TFA:

As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations: U.S. rankings would rise to fourth from 14th in reading and to 10th from 25th in math. The gap between U.S. students and those from the highest-achieving countries would be cut in half in reading and by at least a third in math.

That's interesting, sure, but um... the results probably should reflect that we have worse economic disparity here, and the fact that low SES students fare worse, right? If you want to just pick and choose only the best students, and ignore the ones who are being failed by the system, I'm sure you could make any country look better.

From what I can tell, you cannot navigate or search for addresses while in "offline" mode on Google Maps. If you are already navigating or already have search results up, they will remain, but you cannot pre-download a map and start navigation while offline.

This is not a huge issue for me, since I seldom travel where there is no service, but it would be nice to not have to worry about this at all. I do not know whether Nokia Maps is any better - until now that has been rather academic as it had not supported Android:)

Google could afford one hell of a marketing campaign if they wanted to, but I don't see much evidence of this. Why did they not do a full on media blitz at launch?

I can only assume that + is internally still considered a sort of "soft launch" and they won't start mass marketing until they reach feature parity with Facebook. Maybe they're hoping to "seed" Plus with early adopters now, who will make the service more attractive when it "really" launches, but they run the risk of losing a lot of those early adopters before launch even happens

I actually use Plus (and not Facebook) and it's a fine service, but unless they make some major moves to drive adoption very soon, it's just not going to go anywhere in the long term.

You are certainly right, GNOME's future is tied to Shell, and it's very much unclear whether Shell will ever reach the same userbase that GNOME 2 had at its peak. Luckily, we have choice in this space, and I'm glad to see XFCE and friends enjoy increased exposure as a result.

Of course, some of us do like Shell, so the improved hardware support is very welcome. It may be that GNOME becomes a marginalized, oddball UI in time, but I've enjoyed similarly non-mainstream software for years - I mean, I do run Linux on the desktop, after all:)

I know there's a lot of resistance to GNOME Shell, but it's clearly the future of GNOME (like it or not) and the weird non-3d degraded mode that you get with GNOME 3 + no 3d is something that's not really fit for anybody.

Personally, I really like GNOME Shell and I'm glad to see that it will be supported on older hardware. I always found the decision to completely ignore this hardware to be questionable and damaging to Shell's adoption rate (as if it wasn't going to have a hard enough time to begin with). Surely they could have provided a similar UX without the eye candy for older systems - at least now we have a workaround!

I hear they make videogames, and they have this crazy new console with a 2012. Called a "Wii U" or something. You know, I think they even had another console on the market before this.

I know, I know, the Wii U has less space than a Nomad, so you'd be forgiven for writing it off as "lame," but maybe these spunky upstarts at Nintendo will be worth paying attention to some day. I'm sure they'll never compete with Microsoft or Sony, but hey, you never know.